


Forget-Me-Nots

by coincidental



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Everyone Is Alive, Falling In Love, I refuse to accept anything else, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 03:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15676893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coincidental/pseuds/coincidental
Summary: Mollymauk finds himself drawn to beautiful people the way he does with beautiful things. He adores the richness and variety in people, those who stand out and demand his notice.





	Forget-Me-Nots

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing more Widomauk. Balm to my soul. 
> 
> This is a beginning of sorts. More to come if people are into it! 
> 
> X

Caleb does not look remarkable at a glance. He looks, Molly thinks, a little like a librarian had a child with a traveling salesman, and that child had an unfortunate run in with a very dirty ditch full of brambles. Molly doesn’t mean that unkindly, not even in his own head, but it is true.

 

Mollymauk has always liked his indulgences, overwhelming his senses with the softest, the sweetest, the loveliest. Colours, scents, fabrics, spices - he surrounds himself with it all, decorates himself. Molly’s own skin is scarred but soft, supple, colourful by both nature and design. His clothes are a riot of colour and pattern, richly embroidered and carefully dyed, designed to catch the eye, ever the peacock.

 

To be average is something Mollymauk has fought against since the beginning of his memories, though that time is short. He has this feeling, this idea, that perhaps with the things he likes, he can build himself as the kind of man he wishes to be, hopes he was - hopes he is.

 

Mollymauk finds himself drawn to beautiful people the way he does with beautiful things. He adores the richness and variety in people, those who stand out and demand his notice.

 

Yasha is a presence not to be missed. She is large but somehow unassuming, her height negated by the softness of her voice and her smile. Perhaps she is not the boldness he himself seeks, but Yasha is a balm to Molly, especially in his early days. She’s no shy flower, but her monochromatic quiet is the quiet rumbling building of a storm and the crackling energy there, ready to spill over in thunderclaps and lightning means Mollymauk will always have time for Yasha, kind, gentle, fierce Yasha who offered a hand in friendship before he had a name.

 

Jester delights him, her very soul seems to effervesce and it makes his own bubble up with warmth. Something in her glows and that demands his attention in a way that is a joy to offer up his time. Molly likes Jester, he likes first that she trusts his cards, he likes everything else about her only a breath later. Jester makes Molly want to dance all night, and sometimes they do.

 

Nott intrigues him in a way he’s not sure he expects, her sharp observations paired with her unsettling innocence to worldly goings on leaves him at once amused and taken aback. Her protective streak is thrice her height and Molly admires that too. Her delight in all that glitters is what honestly grabs Molly first though, her unashamed itchy desire to possess things she likes, things that gleam, glitter and look lovely to her. Molly views the world the same, and it leaves him keen to impart more on the goblin girl and see if they’ve more in common.

 

Fjord is handsome, straight up. Though the orcish green pallor of his skin and the slight jut of his lip where his tusks should be are unfamiliar, Molly still sees rugged good looks that he knows well enough. Fjord’s jaw is strong, his smile, though closed lipped, is warm and easy. Fjord is unsure of himself, true, but his manner is so charming is erases that knowledge. He is an easy man to like and for a while Mollymauk thinks perhaps he will try. Fjord blushes and shrinks into himself so delightfully, so coyly, when Molly flirts and bats his eyes. It’s soon plain the way his eyes go soft though, when he looks on Jester, and Molly has no desire to interfere in something good when it’s still in its infancy as their shy glances and smiles are.

 

Beau is infuriating and that gets Molly’s attention in a way he rarely gives the time of day to. She is brash, rude, insensitive and Molly can’t stand it for a while, until suddenly he can, until one day he realises her crass nature makes him laugh, and he sees the insecurity and the need to fit in amongst her fumbling social interactions. Mollymauk likes her gradually and grudgingly, but she forces his attention either way, until he kind of adores her sullen, antagonistic attitude, like the bratty little sister he doesn’t have, or doesn’t think he has anyway.

 

Nothing about Caleb’s dress or his demeanour demand notice, nothing at all. Molly does not understand that one bit, until suddenly maybe he does and he is filled by a burning curiosity. Caleb, he realises, does not want to be noticed.

 

That concept is against all of Molly’s principles and it bewilders him utterly.

 

It is not easy to find a moment in the hectic pace of their travelling life together sometimes to be quiet and still and contemplate, nor, Molly thinks, would the other be entirely at ease with Molly being the one to request such a thing. So, he waits.

 

On a quiet afternoon in a small town with a great market, Mollymauk dismisses the notion of shopping, for once less important in his mind than his own company and lets the rest leave him at the inn.

 

Time becomes syrupy and Molly slips into the familiar ritual, coined not so long ago, but meditative almost in its regularity. He makes tea, a herbal brew from a pocket in his coat, settling said coat carefully on a hook on the bedroom door. He sits down atop a cushion from the bed, breathing slowly evening out and steadying. He allows his mind to slip into that state between emptiness and focus and he slips his cards from their velvet wrapping.

 

Mollymauk does not care what others believe about his cards, their dismissal of the power in them, it’s irrelevant to Molly’s own belief.

 

When he came back, nothing in life was certain, not a jot. Everything was unfamiliar and left him disoriented, floundering for a place and a solidity he could not find. The circus helped. The cards helped.

 

Mystic Madame Sophie, the circus’ answer to a tarot reader, offered to read Molly’s cards the moment she met him. He laughed, hesitant and awkward and suggested another time. The way she looked at him was too knowing, too piercing, too familiar, like she knew something of him he himself didn’t and it was disconcerting, too much. She acquiesced to his mood that day but asked again, a week or so later. By then, Molly had started to build himself, hesitant but steady, the ink beginning to crawl up his arm, camouflaging the strange eyes already there, new healing piercings glinting on his ears and horns. Madame Sophie invited him into her tent, settling him on the soft cushions and lighting her incense and he went willingly enough, it felt safer, like the things she could tell him would build him up rather than undo the little he had pieced together.

 

Mollymauk felt at ease then, the scent somehow familiar though he had never smelt it before and the air felt charged with something that made him straighten his spine and focus on the deck she had in her hands, his eyes drawn to it like a magnet.

 

She read for him and every card she lay down spoke to Mollymauk, clear as bell. Madame Sophie smiled at him, indulgent and pleased, pressing the deck into his hands before he left her tent, shocking him at the gift. The cards hummed beneath his fingers and tingled strangely.

“Ah, there you are at last,” she laughed, grey curls bobbing as she nodded in self-satisfaction. He could do no more than smile back.

“Here I am,” he agreed. He did not ask her how to use the cards, something in him just knew.

 

She left in the night, soon after, and Molly read nightly in her place, wowing the punters and finding a piece of himself settling comfortably in his bones. The cards fit his hands like well-worn gloves and his heart grew a little more content.

 

The tattoos grew, piercings multiplied, colours brightened. He learnt himself slowly then all at once.

 

He has never mistrusted the cards since.

 

He lays them out now with reverence and he listens to the advice they offer, the counsel on his wandering thoughts. He trusts they will answer what he needs them to, even if he thinks the question was something else entirely. Every card he turns chants Caleb’s name back at him in a silent chime, resonating through the brush of his fingers to the deck.

“Well okay then, I’ll look a little harder,” he agrees.

 

When the Nein return later, Mollymauk joins them for dinner and drinks and laughs bawdily at their tales even from such a short afternoon. His new family are full of surprises, and, despite everything, full of joy, most days.

 

The conversation is a raucous clamour if voices rising in volume to be heard over one another. They demand Molly’s attention and he indulges and he laughs and then he remembers his cards and he looks to Caleb. Caleb who is quiet in the face of the wall of noise, fingers curled almost nervously around his drink and hesitant blue eyes watching the fun.

 

Molly is taken aback as he drinks in Caleb’s look, his wary gaze that is warm but holds back, shuttering out the group as though he cannot quite stand it all.

 

Mollymauk notices Caleb in a way he has never noticed before. Caleb’s eyes are Forget-Me-Not blue and when he sees Molly’s curious gaze he quirks an unsure smile and sips his beer.

“You are staring at me, Mollymauk, do I have something on my face?”

“No, not at all,” Molly demurs, laughing warmly to ease the nerves he hears in Caleb’s tone, “I am just taking in your extremely handsome face.” Caleb shrinks into his jacket just a little, ears and cheeks pinking as he rolls his eyes, shaking his head a little.

“Ah, you are very funny Herr Mollymauk, give your pretty words to the others hmm?”

 

Molly shrugs and grins easily, turning back to the conversation with the rest of the Mighty Nein just long enough for Caleb to settle his ruffled feathers. So very blue, he muses, refilling his cup from a flagon, had Caleb’s eyes always been so very, very blue?

**Author's Note:**

> I felt so encouraged and so ridiculously happy at the feedback last time I posted so I can only ask that if you liked this and want more of it that you let me know!
> 
> Thank you x


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